Hello, hello, and welcome to episode 44 of Her Empire Builder.

I’m very happy to today to be doing episode 44, because 44 is my lucky number, and so, I’m pretty psyched about this one.

Now, for this episode, I’m actually recording it right now, which is 2:00pm on Wednesday, and on Wednesday is when we let pod cast episodes drop, and I am recording it at 2:00pm today for the episode to go out today.

[Laughs]

So talk about leaving it until the last minute, and, the reason for that, so I was supposed to record yesterday, so sometimes I’ll batch episodes which is definitely the right way to do it, but often I’ll record on a Tuesday and Christy, my amazing Marketing Assistant, will then edit it all and upload and put it all together on the Wednesday, to then come out to you guys, but yesterday, so on Monday night I played netball and netball is my favourite game in the world.

So, when I was in high school, little bit of a random fact, I played state rep netball and it’s my claim to fame, and I’m still very proud of it, and I absolutely loved it and then stopped in high school, haven’t played netball again since and as part of, you know, trying to get a more active lifestyle and all of this sort of thing, I thought, “You know what? I’m going to try netball again because I love playing team sports, I love the motivation, I really want to give it a go so I’m going to go”.

Anyway, I played on Monday night. I knew that with my level of fitness that I had to take it pretty easy. I did not.

[Laughs]

I did not take it easy. So, you know when you’re in the middle of a game of something, you just like, you know the balls coming, you can’t really go, “Me, I’m a little bit tired, I’m not going for that one.” I went full out, and so I was sprinting everywhere and intercepting and really happy to discover that I didn’t suck, which was a relief because, you know, having not played for such a long time I was like, “Oh my gosh, how much of an embarrassment am I likely to be here.”

Anyway, the point of my story is I went full out on Monday night and then yesterday, Tuesday, I woke up and I had the most raging headache that I’ve had in a long time and I felt absolutely exhausted, and so yesterday, you know, I had quite a few coaching calls on and a lot of stuff going on, and so instead of doing anything in between them, I just rested, in between the calls so I could give everything I had to the calls that I had to be on and then, and then just rest in between.

Anyway, that brings me to why, now, Wednesday, at 2:00pm, I’m recording the podcast for today, and today’s topic, so today’s topic is very timely.

[Laughs]

For me, considering the story that I’ve just, just said to you, is, “Too much to do in too little time”, which is a high achiever’s story of their life.

So, you know, it’s quite funny to me in going, it’s nearly been six months since I’ve got back from my around the world trip and to think that, you know, six, seven months ago, I remember sitting, so, the last country we went to was America and, and we, we went to New York and Washington DC and then down to New Orleans, Vegas, and then we did this big, beautiful road trip up the coast of California and then down in through Colorado, and I remember being on, on Santa Cruz beach in California, and we were sitting there and the kids were playing around and we were sitting on the beach and I was so, clear, I guess the, the word is. Bored, could be…

[Laughs]

…could be another word. So not that travelling around the world is boring, but it was really a moment of realisation for me in going, “I have literally nothing to do. There is nothing that needs doing right now.” I didn’t have anyone I needed to serve, I didn’t have any responsibilities, I could do whatever I wanted, and I was sitting there going, “This is amazing. Never in my adult life have I been in the space where there’s just nothing to do.”, because, what happens, is when there’s nothing to do, there’s nothing to do, and when we have a lot to do, there’s more to do, and I’m going to explain what I mean by that, that shortly, but when I was away I was kind of thinking, “Gosh, I cannot wait.”, so at this point we had about three or four weeks until we were coming back to real life which, after nine months of this kind of bliss of having very, very little to do other than walk and explore and eat and laugh and have fun, it was kind of starting to dawn on me of that, you know, when you feel like you’re ramping up a little and I’m like, “I’m getting ready, like, soon I’m going to be back, into normal life, and I know it’s going to hit me.”, and I vowed, in that moment, that I would never work like I did before.

So, for regular listeners of, of Her Empire Builder, you’ll would know that at the end of 2016 I had Adrenal Fatigue, and it’s something that, clearly by Monday night, I’m still recovering from, and so, at the end of, of Begin Bright, before I sold my company, I was working like a crazy person, and so part of going on our trip was to be able to heal from that, really make a line in the sand to go, “That life has finished now. Now we’re going to purposely create a better life going forward.”, and so, when we were in America and I was getting ready to come back and kind of assimilate back into the new life that we’d created for ourselves, was really when I kind of had to really be purposeful in not getting carried away with all the things again because especially, I mean, on a, on a small scale, you probably know what it feels like when you take a two week vacation it even happens, and you get this beautiful time and this beautiful space in your life, and you can start thinking of all the things that you want to do, when you get back, and, you can be really purposeful with that, but then you get back and you realise that life has taken over and everything starts piling on each other, and so I was in this moment where I knew that life was going to come and I was going to jump back onto the roller coaster and I had to find a way to be able to do all of the things that I wanted to do but still maintain that sense of peace and space, and it’s been a challenge.

So, it’s been six months now since we’ve be back and so that’s what I wanted to really talk about today, is this notion of there’s so much to do, and there’s never enough time to actually do it, and what happens when you do that, because, like I said before, the more you do, the more there is to do, and so when you’re on holidays, or even it happens on a weekend, and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so footloose and fancy free.”, and then, when you start really getting momentum in something, more opportunities will come knocking, and so when you start going really well in business, and when you’re a natural high achiever anyway, the more you do, the more you will think of all the other things you can do, and so, you know, you might be doing something and building a new product and releasing something new and then going, “But then I could do this, and I could do this, and I could go this, oh my gosh, there’s so much I can do!”, which is a really privileged position to be in, a really amazing position to be in, and we should be really grateful for that, but we do need to be really conscience, because, you can’t do all the things, or, it’s a recipe for burnout, and so, the main thing is to figure out what are your things that are most important and let’s just focus on them.

So, one of the very first things that you need to figure out, is what are you going to say yes to and what are you going to say no to, because, I know when you’re in a certain industry or when you’re doing something and you might be looking, you know, in someone else’s lane and going, “Oh my gosh, they’re doing that, they’ve just launched a new podcast.”, or, “They’ve just launched a new program and it looks so good, I really should get on that too. I really should do that but at the moment I’m focusing all on my energy on events, or on speaking.”, or whatever you’re doing.

So, you’ve got to know what is important to you and what lights you up and then what you can say no to.

Yesterday I working with a, with a new client who was talking to me about, you know, she’s got all of these different ideas and all of these different things that she wants to do and she wants to do them all, but obviously you can’t do all of the things all at the same time, unless you have a mega team, but if, if it’s just you and just a small team, and you know, things take time, and so you’ve got to be able to prioritise and work out, “Okay, what is most important and what are you going to do and then what are you going to say no to.”, and, one of the things that we did together yesterday was really work out what is the things that bring you joy the most, because I think the most important metric of success is joy.

So, if you’re doing something day to day that makes you happy, you’re going to naturally perform better in what you’re doing.

So, before you even look at the commerciality of anything, you really want to assess how much you actually enjoy doing that thing.

So, I mean, I love private coaching. Love it! I know from a commercial point of view it’s not the greatest thing because it’s exactly a time / money exchange, and so there’s only so much I can do before I’m run out of time, but, I get so much joy from it and I feel like I’m contributing so much and giving so much value that it actually makes me happy and so I choose to do that.

So, that’s kind of an example of going, “You know, what makes you happy?”, and then just go after that.

So, here’s where we start. When you’re sitting there thinking, and I’m pretty sure everyone’s been in this situation or you may be in it now.

I mean, now we’re sitting in October 2019, and so a lot of people now are starting to think about, “Okay, soon it’s going to kick over into 2020. What are our plans for next year? What do we want to improve on? What do we want to build on? Where is it going to go to next year?”, and when you start thinking about that, everyone’s got these massive plans.

If I ask you, “Okay, what are your goals for 2020?”, and maybe in a couple of weeks I might do an episode just based on that and how to goal set and plan, but anyway, I digress.

“What are your goals? What are you wanting to do for next year?” You’ve probably got, 10, 20 ideas of, “I want to get his going, I want to get this started, maybe I get some more staff, maybe I’ll launch a new product, some new service.”, whatever.

Whatever it is that you’re doing there, and so, when you’ve got all of that in your head the best way, if you’re sitting there going, “I have so much to do and I’ve got too little time.”, here’s what you do.

Get out a piece of paper. A scrap piece of paper, or a nice piece of paper, I personally have lovely Kikki K papers for this sort of thing, or I have like a, like an A4 art book with no lines.

It’s one of my favourite things to draw in and I will dump all my ideas in there.

“I want to do this, I want to do that, I want to do that.”, like five times.

[Laughs]

So put everything that you want to do all in there, so you get it out of your head and all on to a piece of paper.

Then, when you’ve got all of your projects there, all of the launches that you want to do, all of the new products, I want you to look at that and go, “Okay, how important is that to you now? How important is it to you to actually get achieved? What’s the most important?”

So, you look at it all and go, “Okay, I’m going to put it in order of priority, from first to last, and work out what I have to do first, and then what comes next, and what comes next.”

Now, often people will say, “Well I can work on multiple things at multiple times.”, and sometimes you can, you can do thing simultaneously, but the more you focus one major business activity at a time, the quicker that will fly, so if you focus on one thing, put all of your energy into that one thing, get that all running; systemise it, automate it, delegate the tasks for it, then, move onto the next big thing, because you’re at the head of the company, you’re the ideas person, so you want to start doing that sort of thing.

Anyway, so plan everything in order from first to last.

Then, you’re going to work out how long is that going to take you.

So, say the number one thing on your list is to launch an online course.

So, for example, that’s going to take you about three weeks of planning time, figuring out all your different downloads, your course content, filming, all of that sort of thing, then you’re going to need your website built so you’re going to need website copy, all of those different things, so it’s looking at it like a six to eight week project, amongst that’s leaving time for your, for your day job, you know, for doing all of the things that need to be done on a daily basis, but when we’re looking at new projects and we’re looking at big things, it’s going to take you about eight weeks.

So, that’s two months of twelve months gone already.

So, then you look at your next thing and go, “Okay, how much time is that going to take? How much time is that going to take?”.

So, this is what I did on the weekend.

I was feeling like, you know, the more I do, the more I get excited about all the other things that I can do as well, and then, I am not immune to looking around and looking at what other people are doing, so then I’d see other people in my industry doing these awesome things and I’m like, “Oh my god, I need to get on that too, I need to do that.”, and so I add that to my list, and I had this mega, mega list and once I put all the timelines next to each other, you kind of have a little giggle because you’re like, “Really? Do I want to be doing all of these things, that takes up my next five years? It’s kind of booked.”

So, then it allows you to look at and go, “Okay”, (I know you know what comes next), “Eliminate”.

So, we look at these and go, “Okay, we’ve got the important, from the most important to the least important, what things can we just scrub out?”, and I don’t mean like scrub out, scrub out for good, but just park until later because you may find you may get some things done much quicker than you anticipated, but if you don’t have timelines on things and you just trying to smash everything out all at once, you’ll burn out and you’ll be disappointed because you get that sense of disheartenment that you’re not going fast enough when in all actual fact you’re probably going too fast.

Sometimes it’s better to slow down to speed up to get the good results, so you eliminate the things that you just don’t need in your life right now.

So, you know, maybe you were planning a big live event or a conference or something mega that’s going to take so much time and energy, but you’ve got all of these other things over here that are taking so much time and energy.

If you don’t have enough time or energy to deliver both of those things amazingly well, get rid of one, because it’s more important that you do the one thing beautifully than doing multiple things substandard, because that’s what’s going to stop your business from growing into the next level there as well.

So, we eliminate those, then we’ve got a good idea of going, “Okay, what am I going to do now? I’m going to schedule it in there and then I’m going to look at, okay, for October, this is what I’m focusing on. For November this is what I’m focusing on.”

If other things come up during that time, and they always will…

[Laughs]

…always, always will, then it’s up to you to kind of look at that and go, “Okay, do I push back the plan that I had for the project that I had for the following month and slot this beautiful, shiny new idea in here, or, is this shiny new idea just a bit of a distraction and I need to park it in my ideas book?”

So, I have a little A6 size notebook that I carry around with me everywhere. I’m a bit old school, I do have a notes file on my iPhone as well called Ideas, but I like to write things down and so I’ll put it into my book and any sort of ideas, and then, I just close it and forget about it, and then, when it comes time to doing these plans, I get out that book and I read all those ideas and I go, “Okay, which one of these do I want to action and which one of these kind of seemed like a really exciting idea at the time but it doesn’t fit in to my overall vision and it’s not going to help?”

So, whenever, you know, time, money, all the resources that we have, they’re so finite, so you really want to, before you expend your time on things and before you’re kind of running around like a headless chook, feeling like there’s too much to do in too little time, really looking at what are the things that are most important and what can you say no to, and then, having rest in between, because you need to have adequate rest time so that you can think really clearly, so that you can be super productive when it comes time to actually getting those deliverables done.

Then I would say just fill the time with what you love.

So, with all of those other things, if you’ve got some ideas there that you know, you know, would be good for the business from a commercial point of view, or you think because of your industry it’s something that you should be doing, you get to make the rules up for this.

All of the rules that we’re governed by, they’re rules that we make ourselves, and so, if there’s something there that you’re like, “You know what, I know I should do that but I don’t want to.”, take podcasting for example.

So, I was talking to someone the other day and they’re like, “You know, I know everyone in my industry has a podcast. I just don’t want to do it.”, here’s the thing, if you ever say you don’t want to do it, don’t do it.

There’s plenty of other things that are going to move the needle on your business that you have enough to be able to do the things that you really love to do, and if you’re not loving the things that you do, then it’s time to change it up and do that, because all our time in business should be spent on doing things that are adding massive value to our customers and that are going to add to the bottom line.

If they’re not doing those two things, why are you doing them at all?

So, make sure you’re asking, asking yourselves those questions so that you’re not wasting any time on things that just aren’t important, but you’re spending all of your time on the things that bring you joy and that are important.

So, after that, I’m hoping that you have the attitude of, “You know what, I have all the time in the world for the things that are most important to me.”, because that’s what I say to myself over and over and over again, but I am not immune from it, so it doesn’t matter how many times I say, “I have all the time in the world for the things that are most important to me.”, because on the weekend I wrote down a list of 45 different things that are most important to me.

[Laughs]

I had 45 things, I went through the list and I’m like, “That’s really important.”, went to the next one, “Oh my god, that’s vital!”, went to the next one, “Oh my god, this is a must too.”

I felt like that about all of them, but, if I tried to do all of those things it’s going to be a shit show.

It’s not going to be done well, my staff are going to be stressed out because there’s not enough time to get everything done and the quality would drop, and so I really have to look in and go, “Okay, they may all be important and I may want to do all the things.”, because, you know, it’s a curse of the competent right? Is when you can do all the things, you want to do all the things, and you’re getting all these opportunities and the momentum so good and you’re like, “Ahhh, I want to do it all!”, but don’t.

So, I really had to look at that and prioritise and go, “Okay, which one’s going to bring me the most joy? Which one’s going to grow the business in the direction that I want it to be grown in, and which one’s going to add as much value as possible to the people that I aim to serve?”, and in those three lenses, I was able to eliminate most of them and so I ended up with a list of eight things, eight things that we will develop and deliver on in the next twelve months, and everything else, I just have to leave, just have to leave be to die.

[Laughs]

No, it’s not gone to die, it’s just in the ideas book for another day, because one thing I’ve learnt is that by doing less you will achieve more.

So, I hope that makes sense.

Happy Wednesday.

I don’t know whether you’re going to be listening to this, like, maybe an hour after I’m recording it just here, on the drive to pick up kids or whatever you’re doing.

I hope you’re doing it with a smile on your face.

If you have any questions please just send, send me an email, [email protected], or you can find me on Instagram, and let me know what is the most important thing that you’re working on at the moment and what’s something that you’ve just eliminated because you’re like, “You know what, I wanted to do that, but it’s not vital.”

Alright, be awesome.